Departing from an essentialist concept of the self, this book advances the cross-cultural study of selfhood with three contributions to the literature: First, it approaches the self as an ideological ...
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Departing from an essentialist concept of the self, this book advances the cross-cultural study of selfhood with three contributions to the literature: First, it approaches the self as an ideological process, arguing that selfhood is culturally situated and emergent in social practices of persuasion. Second, it demonstrates how postmodernity problematizes the experience and concept of the self. Finally, the book challenges the pervasive practice of equating an individuated self with the Western world and a relational self with the non-Western world. Contributions cover a broad range of topics—from the development of the eccentric self to the ritual circumcision of Jewish males.Less

Rhetorics of Self-Making

Published in print: 1995-02-03

Departing from an essentialist concept of the self, this book advances the cross-cultural study of selfhood with three contributions to the literature: First, it approaches the self as an ideological process, arguing that selfhood is culturally situated and emergent in social practices of persuasion. Second, it demonstrates how postmodernity problematizes the experience and concept of the self. Finally, the book challenges the pervasive practice of equating an individuated self with the Western world and a relational self with the non-Western world. Contributions cover a broad range of topics—from the development of the eccentric self to the ritual circumcision of Jewish males.

Traumatic brain injury can interrupt without warning the life story that any one of us is in the midst of creating. When the author's fifteen-year-old son survives a terrible car crash in spite of ...
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Traumatic brain injury can interrupt without warning the life story that any one of us is in the midst of creating. When the author's fifteen-year-old son survives a terrible car crash in spite of massive trauma to his brain, she and her family know only that his story has not ended. Their efforts, Erik's own efforts, and those of everyone who helps bring him from deep coma to new life make up an inspiring story for us all, one that invites us to reconsider the very nature of “self” and selfhood. The author, who teaches literature and narrative theory, is a particularly eloquent witness to the silent space in which her son, confronted with life-shattering injury and surrounded by conflicting narratives about his viability, is somehow reborn. She describes the time of crisis and medical intervention as an hour-by-hour struggle to communicate with the medical world on the one hand and the everyday world of family and friends on the other. None of them knows how much, or even whether, they can communicate with the wounded child who is lost from himself and everything he knew. Through this experience of utter disintegration, the author comes to realize that self-identity is molded and sustained by stories.Less

Listening in the Silence, Seeing in the Dark : Reconstructing Life after Brain Injury

Ruthann Knechel Johansen

Published in print: 2002-03-22

Traumatic brain injury can interrupt without warning the life story that any one of us is in the midst of creating. When the author's fifteen-year-old son survives a terrible car crash in spite of massive trauma to his brain, she and her family know only that his story has not ended. Their efforts, Erik's own efforts, and those of everyone who helps bring him from deep coma to new life make up an inspiring story for us all, one that invites us to reconsider the very nature of “self” and selfhood. The author, who teaches literature and narrative theory, is a particularly eloquent witness to the silent space in which her son, confronted with life-shattering injury and surrounded by conflicting narratives about his viability, is somehow reborn. She describes the time of crisis and medical intervention as an hour-by-hour struggle to communicate with the medical world on the one hand and the everyday world of family and friends on the other. None of them knows how much, or even whether, they can communicate with the wounded child who is lost from himself and everything he knew. Through this experience of utter disintegration, the author comes to realize that self-identity is molded and sustained by stories.

This book explores issues of migration, medicine, religion, and gender in this analysis of everyday practices of urban living in Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork over a ten-year period, it ...
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This book explores issues of migration, medicine, religion, and gender in this analysis of everyday practices of urban living in Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork over a ten-year period, it paints a picture of daily life in a low-income neighborhood of Guadalajara. The book portrays the personal experiences of the neighborhood's residents while engaging with important questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, and community identity as well as the tensions of modernity and its discontents in Mexican society.Less

Migration, Mujercitas, and Medicine Men : Living in Urban Mexico

Valentina Napolitano

Published in print: 2002-12-12

This book explores issues of migration, medicine, religion, and gender in this analysis of everyday practices of urban living in Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork over a ten-year period, it paints a picture of daily life in a low-income neighborhood of Guadalajara. The book portrays the personal experiences of the neighborhood's residents while engaging with important questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, and community identity as well as the tensions of modernity and its discontents in Mexican society.

Neil Smelser is a professionally trained psychoanalyst who maintained a clinical practice for several years while maintaining and managing his more visible career as academic sociologist and ...
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Neil Smelser is a professionally trained psychoanalyst who maintained a clinical practice for several years while maintaining and managing his more visible career as academic sociologist and statesman. This fact is not well known to the many who know him principally through his published work. However, his interest in the unconscious, in the irrational and the ambivalent were apparent to his students and to anyone who knows him personally. Smelser taught respect for and inquisitiveness for personality and selfhood, and the conviction that social problems can only be adequately understood by grasping the complex and hidden motives of individuals in social life. In the following three chapters, ambivalence is thoroughly examined and analyzed. Smelser argued that extreme feelings of love and hate are likely to arise in any social situation of high dependency. Ambivalence is experienced in highly idiosyncratic ways, but it tends to elicit predictable responses, such as defense mechanisms. These three chapters demonstrate that accepting ambivalence as a tangible and permanent part of the human condition is the key to achieving a deeper and richer understanding of social life.Less

Introduction

Christine L. Williams

Published in print: 2004-09-20

Neil Smelser is a professionally trained psychoanalyst who maintained a clinical practice for several years while maintaining and managing his more visible career as academic sociologist and statesman. This fact is not well known to the many who know him principally through his published work. However, his interest in the unconscious, in the irrational and the ambivalent were apparent to his students and to anyone who knows him personally. Smelser taught respect for and inquisitiveness for personality and selfhood, and the conviction that social problems can only be adequately understood by grasping the complex and hidden motives of individuals in social life. In the following three chapters, ambivalence is thoroughly examined and analyzed. Smelser argued that extreme feelings of love and hate are likely to arise in any social situation of high dependency. Ambivalence is experienced in highly idiosyncratic ways, but it tends to elicit predictable responses, such as defense mechanisms. These three chapters demonstrate that accepting ambivalence as a tangible and permanent part of the human condition is the key to achieving a deeper and richer understanding of social life.

This chapter addresses the recent development of` video, film, and television made by, with, and for Aboriginal Australians. It sketches briefly the context for the emergence of Aboriginal media as ...
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This chapter addresses the recent development of` video, film, and television made by, with, and for Aboriginal Australians. It sketches briefly the context for the emergence of Aboriginal media as it has been shaped by the interdependence of specific local situations and historically changing government policies, as well as transformations in consciousness of Aboriginal and Euro-Australians, and in the broader transnational polity known as the fourth world. Of particular interest is how differing notions of selfhood are negotiated through such work: these range from notions of community authorship embedded in indigenous understandings of cultural property and expression, to concepts of self-determination that have emerged in the political struggles of Aboriginal people in relation to the Australian state, to notions of individual self.Less

Production Values: Indigenous Media and the Rhetoric of Self-Determination

Faye Ginsburg

Published in print: 1995-02-03

This chapter addresses the recent development of` video, film, and television made by, with, and for Aboriginal Australians. It sketches briefly the context for the emergence of Aboriginal media as it has been shaped by the interdependence of specific local situations and historically changing government policies, as well as transformations in consciousness of Aboriginal and Euro-Australians, and in the broader transnational polity known as the fourth world. Of particular interest is how differing notions of selfhood are negotiated through such work: these range from notions of community authorship embedded in indigenous understandings of cultural property and expression, to concepts of self-determination that have emerged in the political struggles of Aboriginal people in relation to the Australian state, to notions of individual self.

The violent partitioning of British India along religious lines and ongoing communalist aggression have compelled Indian citizens to contend with the notion that an exclusive, fixed religious ...
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The violent partitioning of British India along religious lines and ongoing communalist aggression have compelled Indian citizens to contend with the notion that an exclusive, fixed religious identity is fundamental to selfhood. Even so, Muslim saint shrines known as dargahs attract a religiously diverse range of pilgrims. This ethnography traces the long-term healing processes of Muslim and Hindu devotees of a complex of dargahs in northwestern India. Drawing on pilgrims' narratives, ritual and everyday practices, archival documents, and popular publications in Hindi and Urdu, the book considers questions about the nature of religion in general and Indian religion in particular. Grounded in stories from individual lives and experiences, the book offers not only a humane, readable portrait of dargah culture, but also new insight into notions of selfhood and religious difference in contemporary India.Less

The Powerful Ephemeral : Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place

Carla Bellamy

Published in print: 2011-08-05

The violent partitioning of British India along religious lines and ongoing communalist aggression have compelled Indian citizens to contend with the notion that an exclusive, fixed religious identity is fundamental to selfhood. Even so, Muslim saint shrines known as dargahs attract a religiously diverse range of pilgrims. This ethnography traces the long-term healing processes of Muslim and Hindu devotees of a complex of dargahs in northwestern India. Drawing on pilgrims' narratives, ritual and everyday practices, archival documents, and popular publications in Hindi and Urdu, the book considers questions about the nature of religion in general and Indian religion in particular. Grounded in stories from individual lives and experiences, the book offers not only a humane, readable portrait of dargah culture, but also new insight into notions of selfhood and religious difference in contemporary India.

This chapter discusses the argument that the engagement with new biological knowledge unsettles some of the most critical assumptions about cultural malleability and difference in human nature. It ...
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This chapter discusses the argument that the engagement with new biological knowledge unsettles some of the most critical assumptions about cultural malleability and difference in human nature. It introduces the concept of genomics, which certifies a distinct diversity and gives the possibility of relating biology and subjectivity in new terms. The chapter also indicates that the view of subjectivity as open, fractured, multiple, and culturally contingent has left the biological body and its contribution to experiences of selfhood behind.Less

Evelyn Fox Keller

Published in print: 2007-04-11

This chapter discusses the argument that the engagement with new biological knowledge unsettles some of the most critical assumptions about cultural malleability and difference in human nature. It introduces the concept of genomics, which certifies a distinct diversity and gives the possibility of relating biology and subjectivity in new terms. The chapter also indicates that the view of subjectivity as open, fractured, multiple, and culturally contingent has left the biological body and its contribution to experiences of selfhood behind.

This chapter examines the rise of aesthetic individuality in Paris, France during the late nineteenth century. It explains that the rise of the market as an aesthetic arena for individual actors ...
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This chapter examines the rise of aesthetic individuality in Paris, France during the late nineteenth century. It explains that the rise of the market as an aesthetic arena for individual actors reflected the erosion of the corporate society of the Ancien Régime. It contends that in identifying the market as an aesthetic realm, producers of commercial culture were supported by bourgeois elites seeking their own cultural legitimization. It also discusses the social power of aesthetic subjectivity and the cult of aesthetic selfhood.Less

Being Bourgeois : The Rise of Aesthetic Individuality

Lisa Tiersten

Published in print: 2001-09-20

This chapter examines the rise of aesthetic individuality in Paris, France during the late nineteenth century. It explains that the rise of the market as an aesthetic arena for individual actors reflected the erosion of the corporate society of the Ancien Régime. It contends that in identifying the market as an aesthetic realm, producers of commercial culture were supported by bourgeois elites seeking their own cultural legitimization. It also discusses the social power of aesthetic subjectivity and the cult of aesthetic selfhood.

This chapter evaluates the influence of marketplace modernism on the reinvention of the chic Parisienne in France. It describes the commodification of chic and suggests that though marketplace ...
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This chapter evaluates the influence of marketplace modernism on the reinvention of the chic Parisienne in France. It describes the commodification of chic and suggests that though marketplace experts did not invent these ideas they successfully popularized and commodified them. Their conception of the consumer and the market drew on popular notions of aesthetic self-hood propounded in the advice literature of the nineteenth century as well as on new definitions of art and art-making originated by modernist painters and writers. This chapter also analyzes the crafting of the aesthetics of the marketplace, which this chapter calls marketplace modernism, in the face of a trenchant attack on the aesthetic and moral debility of the commercial public.Less

Marketplace Modernism : Reinventing the Chic Parisienne

Lisa Tiersten

Published in print: 2001-09-20

This chapter evaluates the influence of marketplace modernism on the reinvention of the chic Parisienne in France. It describes the commodification of chic and suggests that though marketplace experts did not invent these ideas they successfully popularized and commodified them. Their conception of the consumer and the market drew on popular notions of aesthetic self-hood propounded in the advice literature of the nineteenth century as well as on new definitions of art and art-making originated by modernist painters and writers. This chapter also analyzes the crafting of the aesthetics of the marketplace, which this chapter calls marketplace modernism, in the face of a trenchant attack on the aesthetic and moral debility of the commercial public.

This chapter discusses prevailing sentiments and ideas about the Venetian carnival and the masks. For some, the Venetian carnival was“the other side of life, the counterpart of social segregation and ...
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This chapter discusses prevailing sentiments and ideas about the Venetian carnival and the masks. For some, the Venetian carnival was“the other side of life, the counterpart of social segregation and political repression”. This interpretation of the carnival was widespread. The mask’s anonymity was a ticket to liberation. It conferred on its wearers a power to be anyone they wished, a cover to speak the truth, flaunt the convention, and throw off hierarchy. In a society where social structure was immutable, freedoms were limited, and punishment was harsh for anyone who questioned the system, the masks acted as salutary unsettler, equalizing, challenging, and permitting the forbidden. The carnival was a joyous celebration which erased differences, exposed ideologies, and cleared the way for human connections stripped of hierarchy. Masks revealed a universal impulse for equality. However, the carnival was a willed distraction from dire economic and political crises. The carnival provided a glimpse to the serious issues on social structure and selfhood; on politics and dissent; on destruction and renewal; on hierarchy, democracy, and equality; and on the collapse of the thousand-year Republic.Less

Anything Goes?

James H. Johnson

Published in print: 2011-02-05

This chapter discusses prevailing sentiments and ideas about the Venetian carnival and the masks. For some, the Venetian carnival was“the other side of life, the counterpart of social segregation and political repression”. This interpretation of the carnival was widespread. The mask’s anonymity was a ticket to liberation. It conferred on its wearers a power to be anyone they wished, a cover to speak the truth, flaunt the convention, and throw off hierarchy. In a society where social structure was immutable, freedoms were limited, and punishment was harsh for anyone who questioned the system, the masks acted as salutary unsettler, equalizing, challenging, and permitting the forbidden. The carnival was a joyous celebration which erased differences, exposed ideologies, and cleared the way for human connections stripped of hierarchy. Masks revealed a universal impulse for equality. However, the carnival was a willed distraction from dire economic and political crises. The carnival provided a glimpse to the serious issues on social structure and selfhood; on politics and dissent; on destruction and renewal; on hierarchy, democracy, and equality; and on the collapse of the thousand-year Republic.